There were many talks that I liked in this weekends General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One or two stood out of specific note within the context of our blog. First one is Quentin L. Cook's talk with regards to morals in society. Please watch and feel free to comment.
Elder Cook makes a baseless claim about every 30 seconds. They fly by so fast it's hard to keep track of. Religion has hijacked the idea of conscience and run with it. Why can't conscience be something that we evolved with, along with everything else about us? No God does not equal no morality. Slavery was not ended by religion. Honesty is not unique to religion or God.
ReplyDeleteUntil you offer something other than your opinion, your comment is nothing short of a baseless claim itself.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't conscience be something we evolved with? I ask, why can't it be? If there is no central source to morality, then what is moral and how did it become that way?
What is anything and how did it become that way? The answer to that question is the great endeavors we call science and philosophy. On the issue of morality, Richard Joyce has a great book called The Evolution of Morality. Sam Harris has a new book coming out in November called The Moral Landscape, dealing with this issue. We're still learning and our understanding is constantly being refined. But to just make the claim that God gave us morality is infinitely more baseless than the arguments of morality being a result of our evolution, both physical and cultural.
ReplyDeleteClaiming that God is the author of morality has a source. The books you reference are simply hypothesis, research, man seeking to find the truth. In fact, that is what philosophy is, the love of truth. Your claim is that you are still learning and being refined? To what end? At least those who claim God as a moral center have a source, and therefore there is an end to the pursuit of moral authority.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that even if you came to the truth you wouldn't know if you did because you would always think that you are in the pursuit of it. If there is no center of morality, at what point is there an end to your "pursuit?"
Does it even matter to what end? What does it matter as long as it's truth? So I guess this is where we differ. The pursuit of truth, to whatever end, is infinitely more interesting and fulfilling to me than claiming to have already found ultimate truth. Religion was an attempt to find truth in an incomprehensible world thousands of years ago. We've come a long way as a global society and have learned that some of those ultimate truths weren't really true after all.
ReplyDeleteActually abolition WAS brought about to gain popular support by religious groups. Dont take my word for it however, go to a search engine and type in something like "religious roots of abolitionism" and look for yourself.
ReplyDeleteSo for anonymous to say such a thing shows that he is ignorant of Western History.